


to the traitor goes the spoils (the reward you seek is death)

by postfixrevolution



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Birthright Chapter 18: "Leo" Rewrite, Gen, Hoshido | Birthright Route, i just wanted to make it more painful, maybe past/implied Leo/Kamui if you squint, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 06:10:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9535253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postfixrevolution/pseuds/postfixrevolution
Summary: There is no dying breath to rattle past her trembling lips and her choked throat, but Kamui stares into earthen eyes and thinks, with a fast-fading conscience, that Death never had such a beautiful, unforgiving gaze.[ Rewrite of Birthright, Chapter 18: Leo ]





	

**Author's Note:**

> True to my tags, I honestly just wanted to make Leo's chapter in Birthright more painful. Oops....(?)
> 
> Unbeta-ed but spellchecked, so forgive any small errors, and enjoy~!

Kamui feels her weight lift up from beneath her, gravity fading away in a terrifying familiar sensation. Her strength is sapped by a feeling of useless weightlessness, limbs feeling heavy even as they float at her sides, incapable of movement but drifting about all the same. She grits her teeth and swallows anxiously, unable to quash the new rush of terror and adrenaline that instills itself into her blood.

The click of his horse's hooves is slow and methodical, the hollow sound echoing out of the shadows long before the beginnings of Brynhildr's amethyst glow appears from the darkness; the ethereal light emanates from his tome eerily, flooding into her vision and the air around them as Leo steps into her sights, tracing his silhouette in flames the color of indigo and violet. His sharp eyes never leave hers as he rides forward, and when he approaches her, she is feet above the ground, floating just high enough to meet his hardened gaze, so opposite the steadfast earthen eyes she used to know. Her once-brother glares at her with unadulterated fury, fire in his eyes just as there is fire at his fingertips, buzzing with magic and the harrowing threat of vengeance to be had and broken promises to be avenged.

"Leo," she begins weakly, looking at him with fearful eyes, with useless arms and white knuckles around the hilt of a chosen blade that she cannot seem to lift.

He scoffs, cutting her off with a sneer as he reaches forward and presses the harsh cold of his gloved hand against her cheek. She grits her teeth, but nothing stops the shiver that runs down her spine.

“Look at you, betraying Nohr only to come crawling back,” Leo spits disdainfully. “ _Pathetic_.” The pointed tips of his fingers trail down her face, tracing icy lines down to her neck. He wraps those frigid fingers around her throat with the suddenness of a rattlesnake striking, and Kamui cannot bite back her startled cry, the strangled gasp that bursts past her lips as she wants desperately to bring her hands up to her neck and pry his unforgiving fingers away. Her grip around Yato loosens, and she feels the blade lose itself to the forsaken gravity around it, floating quickly from her grip. She can’t lift her arms, not up to her throat, not soon enough to relieve the growing pressure that wraps around it, and she coughs weakly, stares pleadingly into earthen eyes.

“Please,” she croaks. “B-brother.”

Earthen eyes flash harshly, dangerously, and where there was once a collected fury, crimson orbs catch a glimpse of wild, almost animalistic, and decidedly unlike the cool boy she had known.

“I am _not_ your brother!” he snarls. The outburst startles them both, and in the split second afterward, the near animalistic ferocity across his features is quickly forced away, replaced with the cool and calm anger that he had exhibited previously. Leo steels his jaw, bottles his ferocity, and glares at her. “I am no brother to a _traitor_.”

The word falls like acid from his lips, flicking across her skin and eating away at her flesh with a searing voracity, down to her very bones. A burning sensation stings just behind her eyes at the sound, the beginnings of unwanted tears causing her vision to blur, and as Leo’s grip around her tightens once more, she whimpers.

“I don’t...want to fight you,” she chokes out softly, but he is quick to cut her off with silver-sharp words, with the increase of pressure around her throat, cutting off words and air alike.

“This isn’t a fight, dear Kamui,” Leo laughs humorlessly. “Nohrian law is blunt on the subject of traitors. There is only one punishment. The sentence,” he pauses, digging the pointed tips of his fingers into the flesh of her neck, breaking skin, drawing blood, “is _death_.”

Her vision begins to swim, the earth of his eyes blending into the pale gold of his hair, the swirl of amethyst and violet that is Brynhildr blurring into the ebony and brass of his armor, and it occurs to her that she stands frighteningly close to Death’s door with only Leo’s hand to hold her. Memories of childhood summers in the Northern Fortress flutter past her mind’s eye, small hands still unaccustomed to the strain of war, ungloved by cold metal gauntlets and so impossibly warm against hers, but they are stained by the scene before her; remembrances of hesitant palms against her own are faced with the harsh reality of the same hands, not with their fingers intertwined with hers, but with those willowy digits entwined around her throat, beckoning her that much closer to eternal rest. It’s not hard, for a moment, to see pained hatred and desperate fury where her little brother once stood, and she feels the effects of Brynhildr lift her tears from her eyes, sending them afloat just as it had done to her. There is no dying breath to rattle past her trembling lips and her choked throat, but Kamui stares into earthen eyes and thinks, with a fast-fading conscience, that Death never had such a beautiful, unforgiving gaze.

Black begins to eat away at the edges of her sight when it happens.

Cyan as brilliant as the sun erupts across her sights, flying past her and nicking Leo across the cheek. Scarlet blood blossoms from his newfound cut and earthen eyes widen as he releases her, the glow of Brynhildr flickering out alongside its effects, and Kamui feels gravity overwhelm her, dragging her down with a sudden hyperawareness of her limbs and a breath of fresh air. She lands in a crumpled heap on the ground, panting as Yato thuds dully to the ground beside her.

“Hands off our sister, you reedy little bookworm!

A flurry of panicked footsteps register somewhere past her spinning vision and greedy breaths, her mind trying to make sense of the flood of oxygen that swirls around it. She registers a careful hand at her back and storm cloud grey hair popping into her bleary vision.

“Big Sister, are you okay?” Sakura asks hurriedly, urging her to her feet. Kamui blinks harshly, forces away the blurriness of her sights as she grasps for her sword. Another two pairs of feet appear at her side, familiar scarlet and alabaster boots, and Hinoka’s voice rings out from above her, followed by Ryoma’s.

“Why don’t you come down here and fight us face to face, Nohrian scum?” Hinoka shouts. “I’ll teach you to lay a hand on our Kamui!”

“Trust a Nohrian to have something as cowardly as a sneak attack planned in such a dark forest,” Ryoma growls, hands already on Raijinto. The blade barely pokes out of its sheath, but Kamui can already see small arcs of lightning sizzling in the space around it, tinging the air with the unmistakable smell of ozone.

Kamui coughs, feels her breath rattle painfully through her aching throat, and the burning sting across the skin of her neck tells her that Leo’s harshness will leave an ugly, violet reminder on her golden skin for weeks to come. She wraps a white knuckled grip around Yato and pulls herself up. Leo glowers down at them with the same cruel glint in his eyes that he had earlier, and Kamui steels her jaw, telling herself that she would be a fool to expect mercy. The thought makes her chest ache.

“If it’s a fight you crave, I am more than happy to raze the battlefield of your sorry army,” Leo scoffs at them. His sharp earthen eyes meet hers, and an icy smirk curls up at his lips. “After all, there is nothing here worth preserving. You are a sister no more, Kamui, and as Crown Prince of Nohr, it is my duty to give traitors the fate they deserve.”

Brynhildr glows underneath his fingertips, and as Leo rains amethyst fire across the swamp, Kamui and her siblings strategically scatter. She can feel his earthen eyes on her back the entire time.


End file.
